When I started writing my song, I wanted to experiment with logic. Having only gotten Logic on my laptop a few weeks prior to starting this assignment,  I wanted to try something for fun, and tried writing my first ever rock song. I started writing at midnight when I had a brainwave as I was walking back to my flat from hanging out at my friends’ flat. I came up with the main riff for the song and made a skeleton track with MIDI in an hour. When I woke up, I did a bit of refining to the track, adding in another guitar, changing some tone issues and configuring the sample sound a bit, until I ended up with a very repetitive song, with the instruments in this screenshot.

This screenshot is of an edited-down track, but all the instruments are the same there as the ones in the file I sent to the performers to take a look at.

When I was looking back at the track, I started to consider how well it would be received by the general public, so I started listening to tracks similar to the one I had written. One notable track I listened to was “You Know My Name” by Chris Cornell. This track takes the very recognisable James Bond motif and implements it in a rock track. Seeing as my track had the same qualities as Chris Cornell’s track, I considered how his track became so popular, gaining approximately 97 million listens on Spotify. I thought that the repetitiveness, while it was there, was mainly kept to verses or genres, and the overall tone of the track was what I was going to aim for and use as a reference.

Going back to my track, I decided to write another riff, which breaks up the track more and works well when it is layered with the original idea. I then also wrote a melody for the two verses and put them on the guitar parts. I didn’t record the vocal part until I had a backing track ready to go.

Once I had done a final mix on the MIDI track so it sounded as I wanted it, I sent it off to a few performers on the pop course that I know, and asked if they would be okay to play, and they were, which was great. I had two guitarists, a bassist and a drummer in a studio for 4 hours, and an extra 2, which I used to get a vocal take, and pack down afterwards. I chose to use a variety of microphones, multi-micing the guitars and the bass, and spot-micing the drum kit. Below is a list of microphones I used and pictures of how they were set up.

Drums:

• AKG D112 (Kick out)
• Shure Beta 91a (Kick in)
• SM 57 (Snare)
• 2x MD421 (Rack tom, Floor tom high)
• AKG D550 (Floor tom Low)
• 2x Km 184 (overheads)

I chose these mics as they all captured the frequencies I wanted, giving a heavy sound to the kit and I chose to spot mic the kit because I know the drummer I use is quite loud, but very good at what he does, so this gave e greater control of what was captured and allowed me to mix at a higher quality.

Bass:

• ElectroVoice RE20
• Audio Technica ATM 250

I would have used the DM1B, but this wasn’t available when I was at the desk, so I substituted it with the ATM250. I ended up muting the RE20, because as you can see, I set it up at a different distance from the other microphone, and this was causing phase issues. Thankfully, the ATM250 captures the exact tone I wanted, and so when it came to mixing, it was quite simple to do.

Guitar cab 1:

• MD421
• Sontronics Halo
• MD441

Guitar cab 2:

• C414
• Calrec CM1051c

I chose these mics because one guitar part was going to be more heavily distorted, so I picked mics that would capture all the fuzz and tone, while the cab with the C414 and the CM1501c was slightly cleaner. This gave me a bit of difference in the tone between the two guitars, and allowed me greater control when mixing.

The vocals were recorded using a C414 to allow the capturing of the reflections across the room.

The recording session went well, getting a total of 5 takes on the backing track and six vocal takes. Since I recorded the backing track live, to get a better atmosphere of the track and to allow the performers to have a bit of creative license with the track, I chose to use the last take that I got, as this one was just better than the others. Throughout the recording experience, I came across a couple of problems, such as the microphones not working properly, which I fixed by switching out a couple of XLRs and changing a couple of channel inputs from the wall box to the desk.

Now I was onto the mixing. I started out by doing a basic levelling of the track, followed by EQ-ing everything, and muting the RE20 bass track after I spotted some phase issues. I then decided to route each instrument through its own aux output track, which allowed me to have greater control over the panning and where each instrument, and more importantly, the microphone, sat in the mix.

Once all this had been done, the final step I took to get my drums sounding awesome was sampling a snare sound over the original, to get a more defined sound. I chose quite a rattly snare from my electronic snare sample library, routed it through my reverb send, and brightened the snare a bit. I also pitched it down slightly to fit the tone of the drum kit, and reduced the output gain of the sample to -22.5 dB, so I got the tone of the original snare and the rattle of the sample.

When I was mixing the vocals, I decided to EQ out the low end, and a high shelf in and brought that down slightly so the vocals fit the overall tone better, and added some distortion. I am still working on how to sing in a pop/rock style, as I am classically trained, and want to start singing more rock and pop songs.

Overall, I could have done a better job on the sampling aspect of this track, and I could have done a better job of recording, which I will get better at over time.